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We were at
a charity event in Greenville, N.C., for Jordan's foundation. Most of the event
was focused on golf, but because my father and I are most proficient on the
golf courses that include windmills or a clown's mouth, we skipped that part of
the event. We attended the dinner, which included me having to wear a suit (not
much fun, and something I have more or less successfully avoided since then)
and an auction of various unique Jordan-related memorabilia items (much more
fun).

Now, if
you'll remember, neither my father nor I play golf at all. But one of the
auction items was the set of clubs Jordan had used in that day's round of golf.
We'd heard that he played very well, and he therefore had absolutely no
intention of letting anyone other than himself own those clubs.

I don't
recall exactly who hatched the idea, but somehow we decided that we should bid
against the legendary player for his clubs. At that point, 20 years ago, he was
less an icon and more a relatively normal-albeit very famous-former Carolina
basketball player. My dad had seen virtually every one of Jordan's home games
for the Tar Heels in Carmichael Auditorium. We remembered when he was known as
"Mike" instead of Michael.

Bidding for
the clubs started in the hundreds and soon moved over $1,000. As you'll recall,
we had no intention of buying the clubs. In fact, my dad plays golf lefthanded,
so even if he won the righthanded clubs, he couldn't do anything with them. And
both my father and I are significantly shorter than Jordan's six-foot-six.

Somehow,
this story made much more sense at the time than it does in the retelling. Now,
the summary reads a little like this: we, the non-golfers, were bidding to pay
more money than we could afford to pay for golf clubs that we could not use. Later
that evening, when I looked at my mother as we tried to explain our genius
strategy to her, was when I learned the meaning of "incredulous."

We were
bidding the absolute minimum allowed by the auctioneer, which was usually an
increase of either $50 or $100. Jordan was bidding in Jordan-sized amounts,
usually as much as $500. As we puttered the bids along, he eventually became
interested in who had the temerity (in our minds, we think of him as being
impressed with our courage; in his mind, he was wondering who the two idiots
were) to bid against him for his own golf clubs. Finally, when the bidding neared $2,000, he
had enough.

He leaned
back in his seat in the hotel ballroom. He straightened his shoulders in the
electric blue sports coat he was wearing, and his genteel charity dinner
expression changed to one more similar to what you saw from him on the
basketball court. He held up his right hand, stretched out all five impossibly
long fingers, and said, "Five."

Another
$500? This guy was ridiculous. Didn't he know the minimum raise was just $100?
Bidding five hundred more dollars was throwing money away.

Then he
elaborated.

"Five thousand dollars," he said.

He won the
golf clubs. We earned a story that we're still relaying to friends, and on each
retelling we get a little more swashbuckling and good-looking, and he gets a
little more impressed with our swagger.

Fifteen
years later, we were at the gates of his home in Illinois. No, we hadn't gone
to collect our golf clubs. I was part of the team charged to create the
Carolina Basketball Museum, the University-sponsored collection of artifacts
and exhibits illustrating the history of the nation's best program. Until that
point, the Carolina memorabilia exhibits had been meager. Now, the school was
going to build an entire museum devoted to the program.

Steve
Kirschner, Carolina's associate athletics director for communications, had been
in regular contact with Jordan's assistant. It was eventually decided that if
we would come to Jordan's home, we could collect a few items to display.

Go to the
house of the person who was, by that time, one of the most famous athletes in
the history of the world, and bring home some of his most cherished
possessions? There was no shortage of volunteers for that trip. Somehow, I
earned an invitation for my dad and me, and that's how we ended up driving
through Highland Park, wondering how we'd figure out which home belonged to
Jordan.

You expected his house to be
situated high on a hill, or surrounded by a moat. Instead, it was around the
corner from a McDonald's. It was a nice neighborhood, sure, but it just didn't
feel quite as royal as we expected. There was no doubt it was his, however: the
giant "23" on the metal gates gave it away.

Five
minutes later, we were standing in Michael Jordan's foyer. Giant mahogany cases
ringed his trophy room, and several trophies were wrapped in newspaper and
bubble wrap. "Those are the ones for you," his assistant said.

She pointed
to three boxes and told us we could look through them. We did, of course,
because every extra minute we spent was one extra minute that we were in
Michael Jordan's house.

His
donations remain one of the most generous individual contributions that any
player has made to the Carolina Basketball Museum, which is now one of the
most-visited tourist attractions in Orange County.